Author Archive
Watch-Lister to Review Watch-Listing
White House ethics counsel Norm Eisen’s conclusion that John Brennan should participate in the reviews of the attempted bombing of Northwest flight 253 is interesting.
Currently serving as assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, Brennan formerly worked at the Analysis Corp., a contractor that helped develop the watch-list system, one of many security measures that did not prevent the attacker from boarding a flight into the United States.
In my review of some of the security systems involved in the failed attack, I agreed that watch-listing failed, but I am at a loss to imagine how it could succeed.
On the merits of the ethical issue, Eisen cites Brennan’s long experience and the importance of this matter to national security as reasons that Brennan should be granted a waiver from the general two-year ban on political appointees having involvement in matters involving former employers and clients.
But these factors cut equally well, if not better, in the other direction: Long experience can bring a person too close to the problem to see solutions. And national security is too important to let insiders review their own work.
I have no reason to doubt his good faith, but Brennan’s substantive judgment is likely to be obscured by familiarity with, and sympathy for, watch-listing. He will be unlikely to give sufficiently close examination to the question whether it provides security value given its failure here and its costs in dollars, constitutional principles, and privacy.
Kudos are due the White House and Norm Eisen for posting the ethics waiver on the White House blog. Brennan’s assessment of watch-listing should get similar airing so that the public can review his work aware of his probable sympathies. An outside review may lose something in inside knowledge, but make up for it with gains in substance and credibility.
Terrorism and Security Systems
Terrorism presents a complex set of security problems. That’s easy to see in the welter of discussion about the recent attempted bombing on a plane flying from Amsterdam into Detroit. The media and blogs are poring over the many different security systems implicated by this story. Unfortunately, many are reviewing them all at once, which is very confusing.
Each security system aimed to protect against terror attacks and other threats involves difficult and complex balancing among many different interests and values. Each system deserves separate consideration, along with analysis of how they interact with one another.
A helpful way to unpack security is by thinking in terms of “layers.” Calling it security “layering” is a way of describing the many different practices and technologies that limit threats to the things we prize. (It’s another lens on security, compatible with the risk management framework I laid out shortly after the Fort Hood shooting.)
‘Search Neutrality’ Regulation?
For more technical audiences, I wrote recently on the Tech Liberation Front blog about Google’s claim to favor “openness” when, in fact, its crown jewels—search and ad serving—are closed systems.
Google is “free to be wrong about philosophy, of course,” I wrote. “It doesn’t matter at all—except when Google tries to impose its philosophy on others. And in the debate over ‘net neutrality’ regulation it has done exactly that.”
Now Google is in the sights of those proposing public utility regulation of Internet search. It would be entertaining ironic comeuppance for Google, but “search neutrality” regulation would ossify an innovative business and deprive consumers of the benefits of competition.
An “Attempted Act of Terrorism”
Along with learning the factual details, it remains to be seen whether the effort by a Nigerian traveler to ignite some type of explosive on a U.S.-bound flight was an “attempted act of terrorism”—as it has been characterized by the White House—or a successful act of terrorism.
Though it certainly helps, terrorism doesn’t require explosions and fatalities to work its will. If public fear produced by this incident drives the U.S. toward self-injurious overreactions—abandonment of plane travel, overwrought and poorly directed security measures, and so on—then it will be a successful act of terrorism.
The behavior of the Obama administration, political leaders in Congress, and the media will determine whether this is a successful act of terrorism. One early commentator has framed this event as a “desperate bid for relevance” on the part of al Qaeda, chastising the “permanently hysterical” Rep. Peter King (R-NY) for promoting overreaction.
We will be reviewing the first year of the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies at a Cato Institute policy forum on Wednesday, January 13, 2010—a follow-on to our hugely successful counterterrorism conference in January 2009, the week before President Obama’s inauguration. Along with an impressive line-up of commentators, the event will feature a keynote address by Daniel Benjamin, Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department.
This most recent event will surely be a focus as we review the Obama administration’s first year in counterterrorism. Register here.
Sunlight Before Signing: Turning the Corner!
As I noted on Monday, the White House has begun posting the bills Congress sends down Pennsylvania Avenue so they can get a final public review. This was a promise President Obama made on the campaign trail.
The posting of bills actually began some time ago. I mistakenly believed that a promise administration officials made to the New York Timeshad been broken. But with no link trail leading from the Whitehouse.gov homepage to the posted bills, there was no way to find them. This was only technical sunlight, not the actual warming, disinfecting rays the president promised. So, sadly, we can’t put the many bills that got posted this way in the “win” column.
With a link on the homepage pointing to bills awaiting the president’s signature, a new era in Sunlight Before Signing is about to dawn. The White House’s current dismal SBS percentage (1 for 114, or .009) will be rising soon, and could ultimately be quite high!
Did the administration fail to execute on this simple promise from the beginning? Yes. But the good news is that we’re going to see implementation: average Americans will get a look at the bills that come to the president’s desk before he signs them, with an opportunity to say their piece.
That’s simple transparency, and as I’ve articulated elsewhere it will have salutary effects, reducing last-minute shenanigans in Congress.
Before we take a look at the full Sunlight Before Signing chart, here are some of the numbers:
- President Obama has signed 114 bills into law.
- Of those, 86, or 75%, have been held at the White House for five or more days as a matter of course. Simply posting them accessibly on Whitehouse.gov for comment would have fulfilled the president’s pledge.
- Forty-seven bills (41%) have been posted on Whitehouse.gov for five days, but without links leading visitors or search engines to them, they can’t be counted as fulfillments of the Sunlight Before Signing promise.
- One bill has been posted online for for five days, accessible to the public for their review, before receiving the president’s signature: The DTV Delay Act, Public Law 111-4.
Without further ado, the chart that lays out the Obama administration’s Sunlight Before Signing record so far: Read the rest of this post »
(No) Surprise! REAL ID Deadline Extended Again
In a classic example of the 5:00 Friday news drop, the Department of Homeland Security has announced that it is extending the REAL ID compliance deadline. Forty-six of 56 jurisdictions, it reports, were not able to implement even the interim measures it proposed requiring by December 31st when it last extended the deadline in May of 2008.
The DHS statement insists that a full compliance deadline on May 10, 2011 remains in effect. What that really means is that there will be another false crisis as that deadline approaches, and the DHS will extend the deadline yet again.
The better alternative is to repeal the national ID law and the worthless, expensive pseudo-security it represents. It is not to revive REAL ID under its alternative name “PASS ID.”
House to Get its Own House in Order
The headline strikes fear: “House Takes Steps to Boost Cybersecurity,” says the Washington Post.
What boondoggle are they embarking on now?
Cybersecurity is hundreds of different problems that should be handled by thousands of different actors. The federal government is in no position to “fix” cybersecurity, as I testified in the House Science Committee earlier this year.
But this is a good news story. Realizing that its own cybersecurity practices are not up to snuff, the House of Representatives will be ramping up training for its staff.
Better awareness of the ins and outs of securing computers, data, and networks will disincline Congress to undertake a rash, sweeping “overhaul” of the systems and incentives that produce and advance cybersecurity.
REAL ID Retreats Yet Again
Several different outlets are noting the quiet passing of a Department of Homeland Security deadline to implement our national ID law, the REAL ID Act.
In May of 2008, with many states outright rejecting this national surveillance mandate, the DHS issued blanket waivers and set a new deadline of December 31, 2009 by which states were supposed to meet several compliance goals.
They have not, and the threat that the DHS/Transportation Security Administration would prevent Americans from traveling has quieted to a whimper.
The reason why? The federal government would be blamed for it. As Neala Schwartzberg writes in her review of the push and pull over REAL ID:
If I was a betting person (and I am from time to time) I’d bet the backed-up-down-the-corridor traveler who is then turned away after presenting his or her state-issued, official complete with hologram ID will blame Homeland Security.
Does the ongoing collapse of REAL ID leave us vulnerable?
Richard Esguerra of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says in this Wired article that REAL ID “threatens citizens’ personal privacy without actually justifying its impact or improving security.”
REAL ID remains a dead letter. All that remains is for Congress to declare it so. And it may be dawning on Congress that passing it a second time under the name “PASS ID” will not work.
Sunlight Before Signing Progress: Whitehouse.gov Encourages Public Comment
The White House’s web site, Whitehouse.gov, has begun posting the bills Congress sends down Pennsylvania Avenue so they can get a final public review. This actually began some time ago, but a link from the home page now directs visitors (and search engines) to the bills that await the president’s signature.
This is an important step toward fulfilling President Obama’s campaign promise to post the bills he receives from Congress online for five days before he signs them. I’ve written about it several times, most recently here.
Take a look for yourself: On the Whitehouse.gov home page, a link at the bottom of the “Featured Legislation” column says “Comment on Pending Legislation.”
Currently, four bills are listed there, arranged in order by the dates they were posted. The final language isn’t posted at the link, and it takes a little sophistication to find the final version at the linked-to page on the Thomas system, but this is substantial progress.
Kudos to the White House for moving toward full implementation of President Obama’s Sunlight Before Signing promise.
University of Denver Panel Recommends You Have a National ID
If you have a job, a panel convened by the University of Denver thinks you should have a national ID card.
DU’s “Report of the Strategic Issues Panel on Immigration” says:
The idea of a national card for identifying citizens and non-citizens has become the third rail of immigration politics. But in truth, without a means of positive identification, it makes very little difference what immigration policies are adopted because they can’t be effectively enforced. A means of positive identification is essential to prevent the employment of illegal immigrants.
Only the panel’s narrow framing leads to this conclusion.
Restrictive immigration policies may require a national ID and federal background check system because such policies are so at odds with employers’ and workers’ interests. The federal government will have to continually investigate workers and employers to maintain them.
But policies that align immigration rates with our country’s demand for new workers would foster the rule of law naturally—without a national ID, worker surveillance, and an overweening federal government.
Much hand-waving animates the report. It imagines a card system that is “extremely difficult or impossible to counterfeit.” But that’s a product of how much value your card system controls—the more value, the more effort goes into forging it—and access to employment in the U.S. is worth a lot. The report says nothing about fraud in the card issuance process.
Nor does it calculate the expense to our nation’s seven million employers—many of them small businesses, families, and individuals—for getting card readers. Their proposal to hold employers harmless is an embossed invitation to fraud on the system—unless those inexpensive card readers are also fingerprint or iris scanners. If the system is going to work, someone legally responsible has to verify that the card belongs to the person presenting it. And if you’re going to use biometric scanners, there is a lot of work yet to be done to control error rates.
Of privacy concerns, the panel says it listened to “experts and advocates on all sides.” But the advisors listed in the report do not include any privacy expert or civil liberties advocate. They do include an advocate for restrictionist immigration policies, a police chief, a former U.S. attorney, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, a Colorado state homeland security official, a federal Department of Homeland Security official, a sheriff, the Colorado Attorney General, and a CIA officer. It is unlikely that the one “immigrant rights” advocate addressed the privacy issues for U.S. citizens, much less the technical and data security problems.
It’s not new for people focusing on one issue to think that a national ID is their solution. In fact, it’s typical for people to think that sprinkling technology over economic and social problems can solve them.
Journalism Will Not Just Survive, It Will Thrive
. . . says Libby Jacobson of CEI, writing in the Washington Examiner.
NYT Room for Debate on Comcast-NBC
The Comcast-NBC deal has the traditional media world all atwitter—well, better call it aflutter. “Atwitter” is losing its old media connotations.
So the New York Times rounded up a foursome of advocates to air their views, among them Cato alum Adam Thierer and yours truly.
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